| This dissertation examines the work of Catalan architect Rafael Maso (Girona, 1880--1935), in particular the buildings, furniture, and other objects he designed between 1911 and 1917, within the context of Catalan Noucentisme and European regionalist architecture. Noucentisme was a bourgeois cultural movement that dominated Catalan visual arts and literature during the second decade of the century that promoted the country's modernization while fostering Classicism and a robust sense of national identity.;Like many artists and architects elsewhere in Europe at this time Maso and the noucentistes shared a concern for the vernacular while seeking a modern form of expression. In his buildings and urban plans, and in the rooms and fittings he designed, Maso adopted a series of materials and techniques drawn from vernacular architecture, such as the ceramics, wrought iron, stone, wood, and stucco used in rural areas. He employed them in ways unprecedented in Catalan architecture up to that time, through the introduction of formal and functional elements he found both in Classical Greco-Roman and in modern German and British architecture. While anchored in a conservative vision of society, Maso's architecture and Maso as a public figure exemplify modernity in several ways: the design and production of modern craft; the creation of non-academic exhibition and education centers for the arts; the design of housing and furniture for the new urban classes; the introduction of the garden-city model; the conscious expression of certain moral and cultural values through interior design; the recovery and protection of the vernacular architectural heritage; and a new formulation of Classicism as an clement of modern art.;Maso's development of a modern architectural language embodies Noucentisme's attempt to reconcile the tension created by the adoption of international modernism and the simultaneous preservation of local identity and traditions. Within a revised and broader definition of modernism, it is argued here that Noucentisme must be understood as a significant movement even though it has generally been perceived as provincial, chauvinistic, backward-looking, and therefore opposed to what was considered relevant within the canon of the modern movement. |
